May 25, 2010

O’Reilly Joins Beck to Go After Weiner

Fox News

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Things got heated last night when Rep. Anthony Weiner went on the O’Reilly Factor to defend his claim that Glenn Beck and his sponsor Goldline are working “hand in hand to cheat consumers”. (Video below.) Beck had appeared on the show Friday, hot dog in hand (hot dog=wiener, get it?), winning over Bill O’Reilly (who himself has promoted gold). O’Reilly told Weiner that his investigation of Goldline “smacks of a witch hunt” and that he was unfairly singling out the company because of its affiliation with Beck. Why, he wondered, if Goldline is so shady, does it get an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau?

For his part, Weiner gave as good as he got. He explained that he’d focused on Goldline because it’s the biggest gold dealer and because it’s using Beck to “gouge” consumers with overpriced investments. He also pointed out that BBB ratings are subject to grade inflation, which O’Reilly scoffed at. “Bill, you’re being a shill for this company,” Weiner snapped. “As long as they get an A+, I’m fine with it,” O’Reilly replied.

As MoJo has reported, Beck and Goldline are not the only gold peddlers in town (even some liberal talkers have gotten in on the action). But because of Beck’s popularity, Goldline has a lot more visibility than other gold outfits. And Beck’s pitch for gold is qualitatively different than the standard “I use it and so should you” stuff that nearly all talk-radio hosts do. For Beck, gold is intimately wrapped up in his end-times schtick—if you believe his claims that the dollar is about to be destroyed by our socialist overlords, well then, you’d better get yourself some gold. In Beck’s world, gold isn’t just an investment, it’s essential to survival.

But that’s not the focus of the Weiner-Beck-O’Reilly feud. Back on the Factor, O’Reilly hinted that Weiner is working on some related legislation; so far, there’s no word on what that may be. And Weiner offered to go “mano a mano” with Beck over some “hot dogs and Beck’s beers.” O’Reilly said he’d make it happen. Game on!   

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate